Christianity, Rob Norman tells worshippers at a church in Adelaide’s inner southern outskirts, is a “sleeping giant” in politics. It is a Sunday morning in May 2021. The charismatic pastor with a buzz cut is one of a number of leaders at Pentecostal and evangelical churches in the area who have begun encouraging followers to get active in politics prompted by the South Australian parliament’s plans to decriminalise abortion.
“Some people say it’s a dirty business, but we’ve got to be there,” Norman, who would later go on to join the Australian Christian Lobby as its Queensland director, says.
At the end of his 30-minute sermon, Norman name-drops Alex Antic, a first-time Liberal senator with a minimal profile in Canberra, who watches on from the crowd.
“Drop Alex an email. It’s easy to find him. He’ll start sending his newsletter to you. You’ll start to get enlightened,” he says.
In the four years since, Antic, a former lawyer turned city councillor, has risen from an influential up-and-comer in the state to South Australia’s top factional warlord.
Through his efforts recruiting Christian activists and anti-government sceptics into the state’s Liberal regional and metropolitan branches, the once fringe conservative senator now wields considerable influence over the state division’s policy and preselection processes.
And in Antic’s world, the Liberal church is narrow – the antithesis of John Howard’s creed – leaving little room for moderates and centrists.
“It’s not even factional warfare … it’s a takeover,” says one senior South Australian Liberal.
And as the federal Liberal party faces an existential crisis, Antic’s campaign has made South Australia a roadmap – or a cautionary tale – for the party’s other divisions.
Alex’s army
When Antic watched Norman’s impassioned “call to the political realm” in 2021, his supporter base of Pentecostal and evangelical churchgoers around the state had already tallied about 500.
Antic’s pitch to local churches was that the party needed more conservatives in its membership after changes in South Australia to decriminalise abortion. His opposition to “woke” views on gender and sexuality also appealed to social conservatives.
In a podcast with the former Hillsong preacher Pat Mesiti in January 2022, Antic despaired over the lack of “God-fearing, conservative people” in politics. His plea to conservatives: join him in the grassroots battles to shape the party from the ground up.
“The best thing people can do, in my view, is to have their voice heard – is to have it heard inside the machinery of politics,” he said.
“Then you shape the framework of those who go to parliament, to elections, before people even get an opportunity to vote for them at a general election.”
The Liberal party’s ageing membership has been dwindling across the country for years, prompting major concern among the party faithful. It does, however, present an opportunity for whatever faction is able to sign up new, younger members en masse.
Others in Antic’s recruitment sights were the state’s disenfranchised folk – those frustrated with Covid-19 vaccine mandates and lockdowns, who had ditched the Liberals for more conservative and far-right minor parties.
With key allies, including the help of his lower house right-hand, backbencher Tony Pasin, Antic’s strategy to shape the party from the ground up was in full force.
Lifelong Liberal officeholders in state and federal branches were the first to see how things worked in Antic’s world.
With hundreds of new members, Antic’s supporters quickly outnumbered the longstanding members in a number of annual general meetings.
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Belinda Crawford-Marshall, now the state’s women’s council president, was one of the first signs of Antic’s influence. The former Field of Dreams pastor was elected president of the Elder state electorate convention (SEC) in June 2021.
As Antic’s allies grew, concerns were raised by members over the legitimacy of new recruits, prompting some membership applications to be rejected – a move the party officials ultimately backed down from.
The Liberal figure said Antic’s charisma could win over those with sympathetic views. One conservative state Liberal figure said their office would often receive calls from members of the public wanting to join “Alex’s army”. Others hadn’t realised they were joining the Liberal party, the source said. They would call the new members to ask why they joined, to which they occasionally would reply: “‘We signed up to help Alex Antic.’”
A party vulnerable to ‘manipulation’
South Australia’s moderate faction had been in the Liberal party’s driver’s seat for decades, but when Christopher Pyne exited politics in 2019, he left a leadership vacuum.
Antic simply recognised that and filled a “market niche”, says one state Liberal speaking to Guardian Australia anonymously.
“[Liberal state] council is extremely easy to manipulate. I’m a moderate. My side did it for years and years and years,” another says.
“But the party’s left itself far too vulnerable … these [new members] were not your [regular] church-going folk. These were angry activist Christians who see politics as a pathway to changing the morality of Australia.”
Antic’s membership drive in certain state and federal electorate conventions (SECs and FECs) provided him with allies on the women’s, rural and regional and Young Liberals’ councils. Those, in turn, delivered him a respectable voting bloc, making him influential in determining important state executive roles – like the party’s president, secretary and vice-president – as well as which Liberal candidates get endorsed for elections.
The strategy has already paid off. Ahead of the 2025 election, Antic was successful in winning the top spot on the party’s federal Senate ticket, bumping off the Liberal frontbencher Anne Ruston and stirring up controversy over the party’s “women problem”.
When Simon Birmingham, the party’s then most senior moderate, announced his retirement in 2024, Antic’s pick, Leah Blyth, easily beat the moderate faction’s candidate to assume his place.
The policy consequences of the shift are being borne out too, although the impact at a national level has not materialised. Last year Antic allies in the state parliament introduced a bill requiring South Australians seeking an abortion from 28 weeks to give birth. (It was narrowly defeated in a conscience vote). And at a state council meeting in late May, the council voted to urge the federal Liberal party to repeal its net zero by 2050 policy – a position its own state parliamentary party declined to adopt.
‘Truth to Power’
Antic’s management of his allies isn’t particularly complex. It centres on a simple newsletter, called Truth to Power.
Those wishing to join Alex’s “army” need to pay their Liberal membership fees like usual. However, “IT IS CRITICAL”, Antic signs off in his newsletters, for supporters to also send their contact details to his separate “believe in blue” email, registered to a marketing company run by Ben Hood – Antic’s factional ally in South Australian parliament.
The newsletters, which are separate to official communications from the state party, give followers insights into his priorities as well as directions on upcoming factional fights.
In a May newsletter following the federal election, Antic urged his supporters not to be “despondent” about the results and, more importantly, not to ditch the Liberals for rightwing minor parties.
In a July newsletter, the senator flagged critical upcoming battles in June and July’s AGM season, telling supporters about the importance of securing control of the state’s branches and conventions.
“If you don’t hear from me, then it is likely that the AGM is under control and doesn’t need your vote,” he wrote.
Securing the numbers is critical for Antic’s success in the upcoming Liberal preselection battles for the South Australian Legislative Council ahead of the 2026 state election.
“It will set the tone in South Australia for a generation,” he said.
Anonymous Liberals ‘preoccupied’ with Antic
In federal parliament, some of Antic’s colleagues see his work ethic in a less favourable light.
“His politics aren’t about outcomes. His politics are very Trumpian. It’s very much around what issue he sees as important, and how he can rile people up to defend that,” one Liberal senator says.
“He does not belong in our parliament.”
Antic did not respond to a series of questions from Guardian Australia about his views and plans within the party.
“Your anonymous sources appear to be preoccupied with me in circumstances where I rarely, if ever, think about them (whoever they are). Sad,” Antic said in response.
Supporters are more willing to go on the record. The Liberal National party senator Matt Canavan, a friend of Antic, says his South Australian colleague is a “refreshing” figure in Canberra.
“It’s very important that we have people in our party room that are willing to tell it how it is without fear or favour,” he says.
‘They’ll end up eating their own’
Antic’s rise in South Australian politics has coincided with a number of state MPs exiting the party and moderate and traditional conservatives deciding against renewing their membership.
One former state MP describes the state party now as a “hard right, religious political vehicle” that is Liberal only in name. Another former MP questions whether the state division has become a “shadow party within a party”.
The impact of this shift hasn’t gone unnoticed among the highest levels of the Liberal party; the former opposition leader Peter Dutton and John Howard had both received appeals to intervene in the state party, according to a source with knowledge of the interactions.
While many of the senior state Liberals and branch members Guardian Australia spoke to agree Antic’s faction has successfully taken over, others remain optimistic it is only a blip.
One moderate Liberal figure says the cracks in Antic’s kingdom are already forming over Legislative Council preselections.
Antic and Pasin have “mouths to feed”, they say, referencing their alleged support for bids by Crawford-Marshall and state vice-president Thea Hennessey over longtime ally and serving MLC Heidi Girolamo.
“They’re just going to end up eating their own, which is why it’s going to come crashing and burning to the ground,” they say.
Antic’s influence might be wide-reaching across the state but it has struggled to convert into federal success.
All of the Antic-backed lower house candidates in the May federal election failed while a moderate candidate, Tom Venning in Grey, was the Liberal party’s only success story in South Australia.
One Liberal member in Venning’s campaign says there is a concerted push by moderates and traditional conservatives to sign up younger members and take the party back.
“We’re working on it,” they say.
“We really have to get back to being a Liberal party, not a pseudo Family First party or an anti-vaccines party. You know, that’s not us.”
Another state Liberal member says the efforts are on display in a recent AGM in Sturt – a moderate stronghold for the party. More than 300 local members showed, and the moderate faction was successful in gaining officeholder positions.
“They want their party back.”
A former state MP says the consequences of the Liberals failing to claw back from the electoral wilderness are devastating.
“There comes a point where it becomes harder and harder to come back. And I think that’s what’s happening in South Australia.”
